


Just the Two of Us

by Mengde



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-12
Updated: 2012-06-12
Packaged: 2017-11-07 14:30:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/432174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mengde/pseuds/Mengde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Garrus and Shepard hit the town to get supplies for the Normandy as well as some alone time. The only problem is that the town is Omega - and Omega hits back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This work's genesis came when I participated in a Secret Santa and was asked to write something for my friend Sylla. She's a big Mass Effect fan too, and what's more, she's a big fan of Shepard/Garrus.
> 
> I'm a FemShep/Liara kind of guy myself (shocking, I know), but I sat down to write Sylla the best damn Shepard/Garrus I could, and by the end of it I found that I had discovered an appreciation for the pairing. It's fun, it's unique, and it's cerebral on many, many levels. I hope you enjoy this piece as much as I enjoyed writing it.
> 
> Shepard is a biotic in this piece because Sylla plays a biotic. That's about all I have to say there.

Garrus Vakarian looked down at the control panel, frustration making his mandibles twitch.

He wasn't normally paranoid – well, not _very_ paranoid, he amended – but this was more than a little uncanny. He knew for a fact that Engineers Donnelly and Daniels were quite competent, so he doubted it was their fault. A team of turian engineers couldn't have done a better job installing the Thanix cannon.

No. It had to be EDI.

The AI was sending him a message, he was sure of it. Garrus insisted on making daily personal checks of all essential systems, a habit he'd picked up from his service in the turian military. Turians knew better than to blindly entrust their lives to a computer, no matter how advanced. More than once, EDI had told him that it could manage such checks itself.

Garrus had had more than one run-in with a rogue AI, and his experiences with the Geth had not endeared artificial intelligence as a whole to him. So he continued to make his checks, and he continued to find the same thing.

Every few days, when he checked the calibration of the Thanix cannon, he found it off by a hair. He would spend several hours trying to correct the problem, using a variety of targeting algorithms and some hacks he'd picked up in the military. Shepard often made her rounds of the ship at that time, so she would drop by to see how he was, at which point he would tell her he had no time to talk. He would finish the calibrations, consider it an afternoon or evening well-spent, and get on with the rest of his duties.

But within a few days it would be off again. And the previous method he'd used for adjusting its calibration would be less effective.

What Garrus wasn't sure of was exactly what kind of message EDI was trying to send. Was it toying with him by making the recalibration harder and harder each time, seeing what it would take to make him give up? Was it trying to be understanding of his feelings by making his checks actually serve a purpose?

The whirr of the weapons bay doors was the only answer he received, and that could mean anything. As usual, Garrus turned around to see who it was, and as usual, Shepard stood there. This time, however, there was a smile on her face.

Most turians found human smiles a little unsettling; the way the eyes narrowed and crinkled around their edges was off-putting, even threatening. Garrus had come to appreciate Shepard's smiles, though. When she smiled, it generally meant things were going well – maybe someone was being helpful, maybe things were going according to plan. Sometimes it was just because she had an enemy in her sights.

So he took the smile as a good sign. "Shepard. How can I help?" he asked.

"We're ahead of schedule on the installation of the new probe bay, but Ken and Gabby need some supplies for maintenance," Shepard replied, leaning easily against the doorframe. Garrus had also come to appreciate the way she moved. Most humans had an awkward, shuffling gait, and if they tried to stride anywhere they took long, loping steps that seemed too much for their legs. But Shepard moved like a predator. She moved like a turian. "I figured we'd swing by Omega and pick up the stuff they need. Everyone else is busy, so I thought I'd see if you wanted to come with."

"Just the two of us?" Garrus asked. Normally he wouldn't dream of budging until he recalibrated the cannon, but he had to admit to himself that he was tiring of the game, problem, whatever it was. And it _would_ be nice to get some alone time with Shepard. It felt like they barely talked, these days.

Still. "Omega's dangerous, Shepard. Sure you can't convince Tali, or…" He hesitated, trying to think of someone else on this ship he trusted. "Well. You can't convince Tali to come too?"

"She's up to her elbows in the tertiary power coupling or something like that," Shepard said with a shrug. "Besides, it feels like you're always busy when I drop by for a chat. Be nice to get out and have a little time, you know?"

Garrus spread his mandibles and let his jaw open a little in an expression that most humans had learned to recognize as the turian version of a smile. "Sounds good to me. When's our ETA?"

"Sixteen hundred hours. Meet you at the airlock?"

"Sure."

Shepard tossed him an informal salute. "See you there." She stepped back out of the doorframe. The door closed behind her, leaving Garrus alone with his thoughts and the console.

Their ETA gave him another hour and a half to finish this before he had to grab his gear. Garrus tackled the algorithms with renewed vigor, deciding to take an entirely new approach to the four-dimensional quantum manifold calculation. It would give the damn AI a run for its money.

And it would also keep him from thinking too much. That was good.

Garrus started inputting new data.

* * *

The markets of Omega were a busy place, with dozens of different species moving back and forth in the tightly cramped wards. The air was pungent with the smells of engine lubricant, fuel, and something rotting. A constant susurrus of conversation underscored every other sound – the growls of vorcha, the station news booming over the comm system, the raised voices of haggling merchants.

Garrus paid it no mind. All his attention was focused on the situation in front of him.

The tension in the air was almost palpable. Garrus stood slightly behind Shepard as she stared, hard, at the implacable and unreadable face of the elcor trader. The elcor stood behind his counter, upon which he'd placed the energy modulator Shepard wanted for the Normandy.

His asking price was sixteen thousand credits. Shepard didn't want to spend more than twelve.

"I don't think he's going to accept an endorsement from you," Garrus murmured.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Garrus," Shepard muttered at him. Looking back at the elcor, she said, "Twelve thousand. Not a credit over."

The elcor blinked, slowly. "Annoyed: human, I am in business to make a profit, not to provide charity. Condescending: perhaps if you cannot afford my prices, you should try elsewhere."

Garrus watched Shepard grit her teeth. "Fourteen thousand, and I'll pick up a couple of those stabilizers at their regular price."

"Jovial: that sounds more than acceptable, human. Please make your transfer whenever you are ready." The elcor lumbered off to the other side of his stall to assist a salarian standing there, fidgeting.

"Ass," Garrus quietly observed as the elcor moved off.

"That's still a good price," Shepard said, keying her information into the kiosk. "Don't worry so much, Garrus. Cerberus gave us a nice budget for these supplies."

"Sorry," Garrus replied. "Worrying's my job."

The kiosk informed them that Shepard's transfer had been approved and that the supplies would be delivered to the Normandy within the hour.

"Well, that's everything on the list," Shepard said. "Want to grab a bite?"

Garrus let his mandibles quiver a bit in surprise. "I wouldn't mind it, but we'll need to find a place that serves dextro and levo food. No sense in one of us having an allergic reaction."

"That shouldn't be a problem, right?"

"You'd be surprised. There aren't a lot of turians on Omega. During my… stay, I had to make most of my own food. Not a lot of restaurants cater to clientele whose amino acids are in a galactic minority."

"But you do know a place, right?" Shepard asked.

Holding up one of his hands in a gesture of concession, Garrus said, "Yeah, but it's in kind of a bad part of town."

That got a laugh out of Shepard. "A bad part of town? On _Omega?_ The entire station's a bad part of town."

"So you realize just how bad it is."

Shepard raised an eyebrow at him, a very human expression that Garrus still wasn't quite used to after all this time. Human faces were not only remarkably variegated, but they were also so _flexible._ "We took on the Geth, Sovereign, and we've been fighting the Collectors for months. And you're afraid of a rough part of Omega?"

Not thinking, Garrus said, "No. It's just not the kind of place I'd normally take a woman."

It took him a second to realize precisely what that statement might imply. Yes, Shepard was a woman, a female, but if she took this the wrong way, she –

"I'm a big girl," Shepard said, amused, before Garrus could worry much more. "Let's go. It'll be fun."

In lieu of possibly putting his foot in his mouth again, Garrus nodded and began to lead the way. He headed out of the Omega markets, down several dimly-lit streets which saw little traffic. There was a pack of vorcha loitering in the shadows on one of them, but they eyed Shepard's and Garrus's heavy armor, as well as their armaments, and gave them a wide berth.

A few more minutes of this brought them to Zeta Section.

The neighborhood had once been a large cargo bay, big enough to hold a frigate, but someone had welded the doors shut however many hundreds of years ago, then reinforced them with makeshift plating. Now the bay was cluttered with one- and two-story buildings, most of them pieced haphazardly together from scrap metal, separated by narrow, claustrophobic streets. Only the poorest of the poor lived in Zeta Section, but it was always busy, full of people coming and going in the process of conducting business. It was one of the few places not under constant surveillance by Aria, attracting many people who would rather not give her a cut of their profits.

"So why _does_ Aria not bother monitoring this place?" Shepard asked.

Garrus gestured at the buildings. "Look around. Aria could put a camera on every street and in every building and there'd still be a hundred blind spots she couldn't keep under surveillance. She can't bug the place, either, because the tightly-packed metal architecture scatters comm signals. And she can't just clear the place out, because the people who live here might be poor, but they're armed like everyone else and they'll defend themselves."

"She must have _some_ connections here."

"The businesses pay her protection money, just like everyone else, but that's about it." Garrus gestured at one such business. "Speaking of, here we are."

The restaurant – a generous label for the place, certainly, but Garrus was fond of it – was named The Hole. Garrus had never asked the owner why he chose that particular name. Some mysteries, he thought, were better left unsolved.

The interior of The Hole was cramped, with three tables complete with chairs set up to the left of the door. It was roughly three meters from the door to the counter with the kiosk; behind that was the kitchen, such as it was. One side was dedicated to dextro-amino acid foods, for turians and the occasional quarian. The other side was for levo-amino acids, for pretty much everyone else.

Vernus, the owner, was a turian with dark grey skin and white facial markings that indicated he was from the Draxa colony. He wore a dirty apron, a pair of cargo trousers, and nothing else; the dim overhead lighting glinted off his metallic carapace as he tossed something in a deep fryer. As Shepard and Garrus stepped inside, Vernus looked at them with his one good eye. He'd lost the other one and wore a leather patch.

"Thel!" he exclaimed when he saw Garrus. "It's been a while, my friend."

"Vernus," Garrus said, flaring his mandibles in a grin. "How's the restaurant business?"

Vernus gestured at the three empty tables. "Terrible, as usual. Who's your friend?"

Shepard spoke for herself. "I'm Commander Shepard," she said. "Spectre." Garrus knew Shepard tended to avoid mentioning Cerberus whenever possible. She wasn't any happier about having to cooperate with them than he was. "Thel's giving me a hand with a mission." To her credit, she made Garrus's alias sound natural.

"A Spectre? Thel, you've moved up in the world," Vernus said, moving to the counter. "Traveling in such illustrious company. Nice to see you haven't forgotten about old friends." He began punching buttons on the kiosk. "The usual?"

"Yes, thank you," Garrus replied. "And the fried varren strips for Shepard." He leaned in close to whisper in her ear, "They're the only decent levo food Vernus can cook."

"I heard that," Vernus said with mock indignation. "But he's right. Take a seat, I'll have your food ready in a few minutes."

Shepard and Garrus settled themselves into the chairs at one of the tables. They were metal, reinforced, and capable of seating a krogan, so their armor posed no trouble.

"So tell me something, _Thel_ ," Shepard said with a little more amusement than was necessarily warranted.

"What?" Garrus asked.

"Whenever I drop by the weapons bay to see how you're doing, I always find you calibrating the cannon. What the hell's wrong with it that you need to do that every few days?"

Garrus felt his jaw drop a little. So Shepard _had_ noticed. He immediately chastised himself for not thinking that she would – there was nobody in the galaxy he respected more, after all, and after the third or fourth repetition he was fairly sure _anyone_ would discern a pattern.

"I'm sorry," he said with what he hoped came across as a rueful smile. "It's kind of strange to say, but I think it's EDI."

Shepard crossed her arms. "What now?"

"When I first came aboard, I started doing routine checks of the ship's systems. EDI told me it could handle it, but you know I like to make sure of things myself, Shepard. So after I told her I would keep doing them, I noticed that the Thanix cannon was just slightly miscalibrated. I fixed it, but it was miscalibrated again a few days later, and it was harder to recalibrate. It's been like this for a while now."

"You think EDI is toying with you?" Shepard asked. "You'd think there'd be some kind of block in its programming or something."

"It's just a hunch," Garrus replied. "Fortunately, I'm not in C-Sec anymore, so if I follow it up I won't get reprimanded. I just haven't seen the point in confronting EDI. It'd probably just deny it."

Shepard leaned back in her chair. "That's quite a theory, Garrus, I'll give you that. You sure you aren't just making a mistake somewhere in your calibrations?"

Garrus touched his hand to his breastplate. "Shepard. This is me we're talking about, remember?"

She raised an eyebrow again. "I remember. I also remember you getting stuck in an elevator because you couldn't figure out how to open the door."

"The labels were in Asari," Garrus said defensively. "You never seem to bring up that particular detail."

They both laughed. Garrus felt a warm sense of satisfaction pervading him; it had been too long since he'd had a nice talk with Shepard. The last time they'd had a chance to chat, she'd offered to help him blow off some steam with a wrestling match, something he'd hastily declined. That felt like it had happened ages ago. But here they were, Vernus was going to bring them some decent food, and…

Garrus stiffened as his Kuwashii-mod visor flashed an alert. Shepard was sitting with her back to the storefront, so Garrus was the one facing the window. His visor automatically zoomed in on whatever had caused the alert. Four streets over, atop the roof of a two-story shanty, there was a flare of some kind –

He recognized it as light reflecting off of a rifle scope.

"DOWN!" he barked at Shepard, lunging across the table to try to push her out of the way of the shot. Even as he threw himself at her, the visor flashed the image of the rifle firing in his left eye, traced a trajectory, told him where the round was going to strike.

Garrus shoved Shepard out of her chair. The projectile, which had been travelling on an unerring path straight for the back of her head, tore through her shields like they weren't even there. It grazed the side of Shepard's head, ripping through her hair before blowing through the metal table and embedding itself deep in the floor.

He rolled off the table just before another round reduced it to scrap metal. That one would have blown through his armor and neatly severed his spine. The interval between the shots suggested that the attacker was using some kind of high-powered variation on the Mantis. Shepard was prone, blood pooling on the floor next to her head. Her eyelids were fluttering, but Garrus had seen enough grazes to know that she was concussed and probably unresponsive.

Pulling out his Viper sniper rifle, he squeezed off three hasty shots at the figure on the roof, but his visor's zoom showed two of the rounds thudding into the building and the third stopping dead a good ten centimeters from the attacker as it struck a kinetic barrier. A moment later the figure disappeared.

"What the hell is going on, Thel?" Vernus bellowed from the back of the restaurant. He'd wisely taken cover behind the counter. Garrus could see him gripping a heavy pistol.

"Someone just tried to kill Shepard," Garrus growled. "And I don't think they're done."


	2. Chapter 2

"Take the back way out of the shop," Vernus said, helping Garrus lever Shepard to her feet. Garrus had applied a medi-gel patch to her head wound, but her eyes were still unfocused and she didn't respond when he said her name.

"There's a back way out of this place?" Garrus asked. "There's barely a _front_ way."

"You always were a joker, Thel," Vernus said. "Come on." He headed into the kitchen, motioning for Garrus to follow him.

Garrus managed to get Shepard's arm around his shoulders and started to walk. Shepard didn't walk, per se, but she managed to drag her feet in such a way that meant Garrus wasn't supporting her entire weight – which, given her cybernetic augmentations and heavy armor, was considerable.

At the back of the kitchen, Vernus pushed aside the old, often-leaky refrigeration unit with an ease that belied his advanced age. Behind it was a door – a sheet of scrap metal bolted onto a pair of hinges, but a door nonetheless.

"This leads into the back of the next building over," Vernus said. "You'll have to break through a door there, but you'll be one street over, and that's better than going out the front door here."

Garrus nodded. "Vernus –"

"If anyone asks where you went, you'd bolted by the time I felt it was safe to get out of cover," Vernus said. "Don't worry about me."

"But –"

"Archangel, you need to shut the hell up and go right now." Garrus felt his mandibles go slack in surprise. Vernus snorted at his expression. "You think I'm a simpleton or something?"

"No," Garrus said. "But – if you knew, the reward…"

"Money brings complications," Vernus said. "I don't like complications. Which is exactly what you staying here is going to bring. Now _go._ "

Garrus laid his free hand on Vernus's shoulder. "Thank you." He pulled open the door. The other side was blocked by a large crate, but it moved as soon as he and Vernus put their shoulders into it, revealing the dim interior of what looked like a small storage area. Garrus moved inside, dragging Shepard with him.

The clang of Vernus slamming the door shut was very loud in the storage area. The light spilling in from The Hole vanished as well, leaving Garrus and Shepard in near-total darkness. His visor engaged its light-amp mode, letting him spot the door almost instantly.

"Come on, Shepard," Garrus murmured. "We've got a galaxy to save. Can't let some scumbags on Omega get the better of us."

Shepard groaned. Garrus wasn't sure if she was agreeing or just in pain. The sniper round had carved a furrow in her flesh, deep enough that Garrus had been able to see the bone beneath. His hasty analysis before he'd slapped the medi-gel patch on to stop the bleeding had led him to conclude that the round had actually grazed against her skull as he'd thrown her aside. If he'd been a split-second slower, she would be dead.

He knew Shepard had powerful regenerative cybernetics, but he had no idea if they were effective on brain tissue. Were they the reason she was even conscious? Shepard was tough, but he'd seen more than one soldier rendered comatose from head trauma like this.

There were too many unknowns for him to have a hope of treating her injury. What he _did_ have a hope of doing was getting the hell out of Zeta Section so they could contact the Normandy. That had to be his number one priority.

The door out of the storage area was locked. Garrus fondly remembered when most security systems could be bypassed with enough omni-gel. It had been much quieter than blowing the lock off, as he did now.

He kicked the door open, covering the room beyond with his pistol as he stepped through, Shepard in tow. There were several surprised-looking humans wearing dirty workers' uniforms, crowded around a heavy mech. Garrus recognized a chop-shop when he saw one. They were using a variety of tools to strip the mech for parts.

"Get down on the floor, put your hands on your heads, and don't move," Garrus said. "Now."

They did as he said. None of them were armed, which was good. Garrus would have hated to waste time in an unnecessary firefight when they needed to get the hell out of here.

The chop-shop was a room at the back of a large garage. There were two vehicle doors which presumably led outside; both were closed. There were more humans here, working on a variety of vehicles in what looked like a front operation to Garrus. He briefly thought about commandeering one of the vehicles, then decided against it. None of them looked safe, and there was only one thoroughfare in Zeta Section wide enough for him to feel comfortable piloting a vehicle while under fire. Better to try to get out on foot and avoid confrontation.

"Into the back room!" Garrus ordered, motioning with his pistol. "Move!"

He saw one of the humans reaching for something – an arc welder, it looked like. He didn't hesitate; he shot the man in the knee. With his heavy pistol, Garrus could easily have blown off the man's leg, but he was careful to only have the shot take a little meat with it. If they survived this, he didn't want Shepard to be upset that he'd crippled a potentially innocent man.

"I said move!" Garrus barked. "Get him in there and make sure he doesn't bleed out."

None of the other workers felt like being a hero.

The garage clear, Garrus took a moment to check Shepard's condition. Her pulse was elevated, but strong. Her eyes were still unfocused, and she still needed his support to stand, but she was leaning on him less than she had a minute ago. He took this as a good sign.

His visor flashed the location of the control panel for the doors. Garrus punched the appropriate switch and took cover against the wall to the left of the door as it opened. He checked the street outside; it was teeming with people, but none of them seemed to take any special interest in him. If he and Shepard were being targeted by a group rather than an individual, they hadn't cordoned off this street yet.

Garrus holstered his pistol, then half-dragged, half-guided Shepard out into the street. Nobody gave them a second glance; from the way Shepard was walking they probably assumed she was dead drunk and Garrus was giving her a hand. The medi-gel patch was obscured by her hair.

Just for thoroughness's sake, Garrus tried raising the Normandy. As he'd expected, the extremely dense metal architecture of Zeta Section scattered his comm signal. His visor reported the signal traveled less than ten meters before degrading to white noise.

It also reported that as soon as he sent the signal, its motion-tracking system picked up a contact reversing direction and heading straight for him. Garrus swore under his breath. It was clear that they were up against more than one person, and that whoever they were fighting had their operating frequencies tagged. Even if he could get through to the Normandy, the enemy would be able to track him.

Combined, the two facts gave him one more: whoever the enemy was, they knew precisely who they were targeting and what they were doing. This was no merc squad.

They were fighting assassins.

"Shepard," Garrus whispered, not altering his pace or course through the teeming mass of bodies. "I need you to focus. Do you know where you are? Do you know who I am?"

"Nngh," Shepard grunted.

"Someone is after us," Garrus said, hoping that was a positive response. "They've sent assassins. We need to get out of here. Can you walk?"

"Nngh."

If it really was a positive response, Garrus thought, he was about to find out. The contact was closing in, only three meters away now, and he wanted to have two hands to deal with him. His visor gave him a reverse view, letting him see the enemy without having to even turn his head. It was a salarian, armored and helmeted. There was a pistol at his hip, but he seemed otherwise unarmed. Given the limited circumstantial evidence he'd seen so far, Garrus was willing to bet that they were being targeted by a cell in the Salarian Special Tasks Group.

He didn't want to create a mass panic – or worse, a mass shoot-out – so he turned a corner into a deserted side street, barely a meter and a half in width, the assassin following.

As soon as the assassin started to reach for his gun, Garrus whirled, letting go of Shepard. The salarian had his gun half out of his holster, which meant he was down a hand and had no bead on Garrus to make up for it.

It wasn't even a contest. Garrus fired a snap kick into the salarian's gut. As the assassin doubled over, still drawing his pistol as he did, Garrus grabbed him by the back of his head. Bringing up his armored knee and pushing down on the salarian's head simultaneously, he smashed his knee joint through the salarian's face-plate. Garrus felt his armor crack the salarian's skull like an eggshell; he let the assassin drop in the street, dead or close enough to it.

Nobody seemed to have noticed the altercation, but Garrus's visor immediately pinged him with half a dozen more contacts beginning to converge on his position. He whirled, desperately hoping that Shepard was still on her feet. Fortune still favored them, it seemed, because she was, though she was leaning against the rusty wall of a building to support herself.

Her eyes, Garrus saw, were focused now. They were fixed on his own.

"Garrus," Shepard said, her voice hoarse. "What's going on?"

"Assassins," Garrus replied, motioning for her to get moving. "One of them shot you when we were in The Hole. You got grazed. You've been semiconscious ever since."

"Can't walk."

Garrus got her arm around his shoulders again and they started to move as fast as they could. Their pace was improved now that Shepard was moving under her own power, but it was as she'd said. She was having great difficulty putting one foot in front of the other.

"That Cerberus tech must be good for something," Garrus said as they cleared the side street and plunged back into the crowd. "Anyone else would be out cold after a graze like that." His visor kept flashing warnings at him, but it seemed that the assassins were channeling themselves toward the position of their fallen ally. For the moment, he and Shepard were clear.

"Head's killing me," Shepard said. "Feel sick. Dizzy. Must be a hell of a concussion."

"If you have to be sick, try to avoid everyone's feet," Garrus said in a halfhearted attempt at humor. "We don't need _more_ people chasing us."

Shepard snorted. "Please, Garrus. Not my first head injury. I'll deal with it." She looked around, clearly trying to get her bearings. "Where's our extraction point?"

"A hundred and sixty meters ahead," Garrus said. "If we can get that far, we'll be able to transmit an SOS to the Normandy."

"That as the crow flies?"

"Unfortunately. It's more like three hundred meters with the way the streets wind." His visor told him the assassins were proceeding down the side street. "Come on. We need to get off this street before they catch up."

He led Shepard into another side street branching off at a right angle. On his motion tracker, Garrus watched the assassins rush onto the street he and Shepard had just vacated, then begin to fan out in a standard search pattern. That was a good sign; for the moment, he'd managed to lose them. Still, he couldn't afford complacency. The enemy could still could have snipers in the few elevated vantage points in the Section.

Elevated…

"Son of a bitch," Garrus said. "I'm an idiot."

"More labels in Asari?" Shepard asked. Her voice was still hoarse, but Garrus could hear her attempt at a cavalier tone.

"We don't need to go a hundred-odd meters that way if we can just go twelve straight up," Garrus said. "If we can get sufficient elevation, the angle should let me get a tight-beam transmission to the Normandy."

"Are there any buildings that high in Zeta Section?"

"Just one, but it's only thirty meters away." Garrus pointed up at a windowless, four-story tower which looked like it had been welded together from the hull plates of at least a dozen different vessels. "Problem is that it's a Blood Pack base. There'll be vorcha and at least one krogan inside, and none of them will be happy to see us."

"I guess we _did_ kill their boss," Shepard laughed, her voice full of pain. "Your call, Garrus. I'm in no shape to be making command decisions."

Garrus looked at his motion tracker again. The assassins were getting closer.

He patted his Vindicator battle rifle. "I _have_ been meaning to see how effective the new AP rounds are against krogan."

Shepard smiled at him. Rather than feeling soothed or being able to appreciate the expression, Garrus felt his gut clench. Things were most definitely not going well. This was not one of Shepard's real smiles, the ones she showed when she was tearing apart a squad of enemy soldiers with her biotics. This was her putting up a brave front for him. A piercing moment of clarity struck him, and in that instant Garrus knew Shepard did not expect to make it out of Zeta Section alive.

"Sounds good to me," she said. "After you, Garrus."

Garrus offered her his shoulder again. Together, they moved out of the side street in the direction of the Blood Pack tower.

They _were_ going to get through this, Garrus swore. He'd wasted too much time, let too much go unsaid, for either of them to die in this place. He would be damned before he let anyone kill Shepard.

They stopped at the foot of the tower. The front door was a single massive sheet of metal. There was no way Garrus would be able to force it by himself, especially not from the outside.

"Ideas?" Garrus asked. The nearest assassin was only thirty meters away.

"Yeah," Shepard said. Pain written on her features, she straightened up, the familiar blue glow of a biotic field enveloping her. Flames of zero-point energy wreathed her hands and her eyes shone with an eerie light.

"We knock."


	3. Chapter 3

Garrus's visor helpfully informed him that the Blood Pack base's front door weighed a little more than a metric ton as Shepard tore it off its hinges with a biotic shockwave.

The metal crumpled inward like it was being hammered with an invisible fist before the door went flying. Garrus watched it land on a pair of vorcha who had been playing cards at a table. The creatures didn't have a chance in hell.

There were three more vorcha in the room, which was a large, open space with tables and chairs scattered about haphazardly. The stairs up to the next floor jutted out of the wall on the right side of the room, leading up for about three meters before becoming contiguous with the metal plating of the second story floor. At the back of the room was a series of food preparation units; clearly the Blood Pack used this floor of the tower as their mess hall. The vorcha were busy eating – one actually had a strip of varren meat raised halfway to its open mouth as it sat, frozen, in a stunned stillness that was almost comedic.

Garrus shot that one first, his Vindicator battle rifle spitting a triple burst into its face. A spray of red blood and brains erupted out the back of its spiny cranium and it slumped in its chair, quite dead. In the half-second it took the varren meat to fall to the floor from its limp arm, Garrus nailed the second vorcha between the eyes as well.

The third one was smarter, or at least quicker, than its brethren. It dove for cover, drawing a heavy pistol as it did so. Garrus risked a sideways glance at Shepard; she was on her knees, her biotic field rippling wildly as it destabilized. The fact that she'd been able to use her biotic abilities at all in her condition was nothing short of miraculous.

As the third vorcha popped out of cover to try to get a shot off at Garrus, he drilled a triple burst into its face. It dropped to the floor and didn't get up. Even as he stepped over the threshold and did a quick sweep to confirm the room was clear, his visor flashed an alert. The assassins were closing in.

Garrus whirled, sighting in on the nearest one in the street – another fully-armored salarian – and firing. He sprayed bullets at the assassin, going for intimidation rather than actual harm. The rounds stopped dead as they impacted the salarian's kinetic barrier, but he dove for cover, deterred for the moment. Bystanders screamed and fled, creating a panic that would doubtless slow down the other assassins.

"Shepard! Inside, let's go!" Garrus snapped. He hauled Shepard by the arm into the tower. As soon as he stepped over the threshold, his visor informed him that the tower was under the effect of some kind of dampening field; motion tracking would be useless.

That was fine. He would just have to locate his foes the old-fashioned way.

"Can you follow me up the stairs?" he asked.

"We're about to find out, aren't we?" Shepard groaned. "Go!"

Garrus rushed up the stairs, ejecting his thermal clip and slapping in a new one as he did. He leveled his Vindicator at the space above his head, fully expecting to have a krogan waiting for him.

Much to his surprise, there was nobody on the second floor. A quick glance made the reason clear: it was full of deactivated light mechs. They covered the floor save for a narrow path across the room from the stairs on which Garrus stood to another set leading up to the third story.

None of the mechs seemed to be activating, so Garrus glanced behind him to see how Shepard was doing. She was having difficulty navigating the stairs, but she was still managing to keep a decent pace.

"Shepard, we've got trouble," Garrus said. "Second floor's full of mechs."

"They're not shooting, are they?" Shepard asked.

"No, but there's only one way through the room without touching any of them, and I'll bet there's a scanner planted on the path that'll activate the mechs if we show up as unidentified hostiles. If we touch the mechs, try to disable the scanner, or just start shooting…"

Shepard struggled up to the top of the stairs to stand next to him. "Great. Thoughts?"

"Unless you've got another biotic burst in you, I was thinking 'run as fast as we can and hope the mechs don't take us apart before we get upstairs.'"

Visibly shaking from the effort, Shepard threw a biotic barrier up around herself. "You sure know how to show a girl a good time, Garrus."

"I aim to please," Garrus said. "You go first. Ready?"

Shepard nodded. She hurtled forward, her movements jerky and uncoordinated, but she managed to rush across the room at a respectable clip, Garrus hot on her heels.

Just as he'd suspected, as soon as they hit the halfway point, the faceplates of the light mechs flashed a deep red and they began to deploy, telescoping up from the ground and reaching for their pistols.

Garrus slashed into the right flank with fire from the Vindicator, wishing for perhaps the first time in his life that he had a weapon less focused on accuracy and more capable of spray-and-pray automatic fire. His bursts took out one, two, three, four of the mechs, but there were more than twenty of them all told. Shepard had just started up the stairs when her barrier and Garrus's shields flared up with blue light as the mechs began to pour fire into them.

"KEEP GOING!" Garrus shouted. He released the safety on the Vindicator's undercarriage and fired the rifle's secondary weapon, a wide-burst concussive shot that sent multiple mechs flying. His shields burned a bright whitish-blue as they went down, and he stumbled as his armor took the impact of several slugs.

Shepard was all the way up the stairs, though. She was going to be fine –

The flaw in Garrus's plan to rush across the room and up the stairs became apparent to him when Shepard took a Claymore shotgun blast right to the chest. The slugs from the weapon ripped through her biotic barrier, shredded her shields, and lifted her off her feet, slamming her into the wall of the tower.

Garrus, pain shooting through him every time he took a breath, hurled himself up the stairs to try to get between her and whoever had shot her. He stumbled out onto the third floor of the tower, which seemed to be set up as barracks – cots against the walls, more tables with chairs set up in the center of the room, a desk with a computer terminal – and found himself face-to-face with an armored, armed, and angry krogan.

The krogan had just finished ejecting the spent thermal clip from his Claymore shotgun and was in the process of inserting a new one. The krogan was surprised, not to mention off-guard, so Garrus took the only advantage he could. He surged forward, pressed the barrel of his Vindicator flush against the krogan's skull, and fired even as he heard the merc finish inserting the thermal clip.

Most krogan had impressive dermal plating on the top of their heads, and this one was no different, but with the Vindicator inside his shields and pressed against his head, it didn't help the merc at all. Garrus's rounds blew straight through his skull and exploded out the bottom of his jaw. The krogan stood there for a moment, a shocked expression on his wide, angry face, before he collapsed, slowly, to one side. He hit the floor with a loud _clang._

In doing so, he revealed the _other_ krogan in the room, the one that Garrus had been totally unable to see past his companion.

This one wielded a Revenant light machine gun. Garrus's eyes widened as he saw the merc take exaggeratedly careful aim with the weapon. The krogan's huge mouth hung open in a toothy grin as he squeezed the trigger.

Garrus immediately dove to the floor. He still felt his armor take more punishment, and one of the Revenant's slugs clipped his crest, snapping his head painfully to the side. Garrus hit the floor hard, already firing the Vindicator. His bursts slammed uselessly into the krogan's kinetic barrier even as the alien tracked the Revenant's lethal spray of fire down to follow Garrus. Desperation gripping him, Garrus threw himself into a roll, tumbling away to the side as the Revenant's projectiles tore clean through the floor where he'd been lying a moment before.

Even with the roar of the light machine gun, Garrus could hear the whirring footsteps of the light mechs. They were ascending the stairs in pursuit of him and Shepard.

His roll took him straight into the legs of a table. Garrus could only stare helplessly as the krogan swept the Revenant's fire toward him, closing inexorably in on his head –

Shepard, who had somehow managed to crawl far enough away from the stairs to avoid being shot by the mechs, hit the krogan with another biotic shockwave. Her attack tore straight through his kinetic barrier, making him stumble. The spray of death from his machine gun halted as he released the trigger, trying to recover his balance.

Garrus seized the opening. He hit the krogan with a concussive burst from the Vindicator. Just as he'd hoped, the massive alien toppled to the ground. It would take him at least three seconds to get back to his feet, probably more. Taking full advantage of his opponent's vulnerability, Garrus scrambled to his feet, heading straight for the body of the first krogan, dropping the Vindicator as he moved. With considerable effort, Garrus scooped up the first krogan's Claymore shotgun. He leveled it at the second krogan just as the merc got to his feet and fired.

The recoil of the weapon crushed into his chest and fractured his armor. Garrus was sure he felt something crack in his arm. But he managed to keep his feet, and more importantly, the slugs ripped into the now-shieldless krogan, spraying the wall behind him with his blood. He staggered, falling again. With his good arm, Garrus drew his heavy pistol and pumped six rounds into the merc to make sure he didn't get up.

The mechs were almost on them. Garrus dropped his pistol, hobbling across the room to the Revenant the second krogan had dropped. Ignoring the searing pain in his right arm, he hefted the light machine gun, ejected the thermal clip, and slapped a new one in. Trying to take most of the gun's weight with his left arm – no easy task, but doable – Garrus walked over to the stairs. Shepard was lying face-down on the floor, unmoving, but he could check her condition in a moment, when they weren't about to be slaughtered by mechs.

Garrus took up position at the top of the stairs. The two mechs at the front of the squad ascending the stairs opened up on him, but his shields were back up now.

He held down the trigger on the Revenant and didn't let go until the thermal clip fell, glowing white-hot, from the weapon. The last mech, now nothing more than a pile of scrap, hit the floor with a _clang_ that was very loud in the sudden silence.

Giving into his body's demands, Garrus let the Revenant drop to the floor with a _thud._ His right arm felt like it was on fire.

_Shepard._

Garrus rushed to her side, grabbing the Vindicator and returning it to his back as he did. With his good arm, he gingerly turned her over. Her armor was compromised in at least five areas across her breastplate and she was very pale. The floor beneath her was sticky with her blood.

"Shepard!" Garrus shouted, not caring that they still had one more floor to clear. If there were any more Blood Pack mercs, he and Shepard were dead anyway. "Wake up!"

Shepard's eyelids fluttered. Her eyes focused in on his. "Did we get them?" she murmured.

"We did," Garrus said. "We got them, Shepard. Come on. We've got to get to the top floor." He offered her his good hand. It was profoundly unwise to move her in the condition she was in, but he couldn't just leave her down here. They had to get upstairs and set up a defensive position while they waited for rescue from the Normandy.

Assuming his calculations were even correct about being able to get a signal through.

Shepard took his hand and he hauled her to her feet. She swayed, unsteady, for a moment before stumbling forward. Garrus caught her, wrapping his good arm around her waist. "Steady, Shepard," he said, trying to sound reassuring. "You're going to have to walk it. I'd carry you, but I fractured my arm firing that damn shotgun."

"Garrus," Shepard said, her voice quiet and reproving. "You didn't need to do that."

This was not good. He couldn't afford to have her go into shock. "Come on," he repeated. "Up the stairs, Shepard. Let's go. Lean on me." They limped across the room to the last set of stairs, began the slow, painful ascent. "Lot of security for a Blood Pack base in the middle of a shithole," Garrus observed, trying to keep Shepard focused on his voice and therefore conscious. "Mechs, krogan with top-of-the-line weaponry. Wonder what they've got on the fourth floor."

"Who knows," Shepard said. She sounded distant, almost dreamy. "You know about this place from your time as Archangel, Garrus?"

"Yeah," Garrus said. "I never bothered trying to get anyone inside. I figured it was just another Blood Pack base and they built it taller than everything else because krogan love looking down on their enemies."

"You know that's not true," Shepard countered with a quiet laugh. "Krogan love strong enemies. They'd never disrespect them that way."

"Fair point," Garrus replied as they neared the top of the stairs. "Get ready to have to stand up on your own, Shepard. If anybody's up here, I'm going to have to take them out."

"Sure," Shepard whispered. "No problem."

They staggered up onto the fourth story of the tower, and it became abundantly clear why the Blood Pack had guarded this base so well.

The fourth story was filled with communications equipment. Computer terminals lined the walls, all of them running thick grey power lines across the floor to a squat generator which sat in a corner of the room. In the center was a collection of comm dishes which Garrus recognized as a broad-spectrum transceiver. Next to it was another generator, doubtless the source of the dampening field.

"This is incredible, Shepard," he said. "This kind of equipment – the Blood Pack must be tapping into signals all over Omega from here. They're eavesdropping on the entire station, and from the only part of it where Aria can't touch them."

"Tricky bastards," Shepard murmured. She was beginning to slump against Garrus, the strength going out of her legs.

He hastily laid her down in the only bare patch of floor on the fourth story. With a few quick commands, Garrus linked his omni-tool into the transceiver, shut down the dampening field affecting his visor, then broadcast an SOS to the Normandy. A moment later, Joker's image popped up in his visor. "Garrus?" he demanded. "What the hell's the matter?"

"Shepard and I are under attack," Garrus said. "Assassins. I'm sending you our coordinates; we'll try to hold here until you can get reinforcements to us. Hurry or I doubt you'll even find our bodies." He cut the transmission.

Once they'd gone inside the tower, his visor had lost track of the assassins due to the dampening field, but now it reported that nine of them were on the first floor, advancing cautiously up the stairs. The only thing he had going for him was the fact that the only way into the fourth story was the stairway, which he could easily cover from its mouth.

But right now, he and Shepard needed medical attention. He had maybe thirty seconds before he would need to take up a position to cover the stairs. Moving quickly, he popped the seals on the armor covering his right arm. He didn't have time to locate the fracture precisely, so he pulled a medi-gel patch from his belt and slapped it on his bicep, where the pain was worst. The pain immediately lessened, though Garrus knew better than to try to do anything intensive with the arm.

"Shepard," he said, trying to keep her awake. "Your armor's compromised. You're badly wounded. I need to apply some medi-gel. Can you pop your seals for me?"

"Sure," Shepard whispered without opening her eyes. Her armor hissed as she gave it the command to release its seals.

Garrus pulled her breastplate off and swore softly at the sight of Shepard's wounds. It was surprising she wasn't already dead. Even with her bloodslick uniform clinging to her chest, it was painfully obviously where the slugs had gotten through. Garrus applied the last of his medi-gel patches to her wounds.

"Stay with me, Shepard," he said, his mandibles twitching uncontrollably. "The Normandy knows where we are, they're sending a team in. We're going to be fine." He pulled the Vindicator from his back, loaded a new thermal clip into it. The assassins were on the third floor now, heading for the stairs.

"Tell me something, Garrus," Shepard said as he took up position at the top of the stairs, her voice barely above a whisper.

"What?"

"This how most… of your first dates go?" Her breaths were labored, forcing her to gulp for air between phrases.

Garrus resisted the urge to snap his head around to stare at her, instead keeping his sights on the bottom of the stairs. "What?" he repeated himself.

"You said… that Zeta Section isn't the kind of place… you'd normally take a woman."

An armored salarian became visible at the bottom of the stairs. Garrus hit him with a concussive shot. The assassin's shields absorbed the brunt of the attack, but he immediately retreated, spraying the stairs with suppressing fire from his SMG. Garrus's shields took a few stray shots, but held firm.

"I didn't mean it that way," Garrus said, feeling ridiculous for having this discussion now, of all times, but determined to keep Shepard conscious however he could.

"Shame," Shepard sighed. "I… kind of hoped… you did."

Garrus felt his gut clench. "Really?"

"I didn't really want… to wrestle you, Garrus. I thought I was… pretty obvious."

His visor told him that the assassins were gathering just outside his field of fire. They probably planned to rush the stairs, to try to overwhelm him with their numbers. Given his dwindling supply of thermal clips, it would probably work.

"I –" Garrus hesitated. He had to believe they were going to make it out alive. That meant keeping his peace, dealing with this rationally once they were out of the heat of combat, and –

_Screw it._

"I check the Normandy's systems to avoid having to talk to you," he said.

Shepard laughed – or coughed, he couldn't tell. Either way, it was a hacking, awful sound. "What now?"

"It was too much," he said, the words spilling out of him. "My life went crazy the day you showed up on the Citadel looking for Saren. We went through hell together, Shepard. You taught me about holding myself accountable for my own actions, and about responsibility, and then – well, everything fell apart once you died." One of the assassins leaned into Garrus's sights to see if he was still there; Garrus rewarded the salarian's effort with a triple burst. He jerked back out of view as Garrus's rounds slammed into the kinetic barrier right in front of his face.

"I spent two years trying to figure out where I belonged, what I was going to do, grieving, just trying to get through every single damn day until I couldn't take it anymore and came to Omega to die trying to make a difference. I knew what I was doing. Being a hero on Omega's a losing proposition, Shepard. I was coming here to die too."

"But you didn't die."

"I didn't. I was too afraid to just put a gun to my head myself, and while I was looking for someone else to do it I got a lot of good men killed. I was worthless, less than worthless. The only person who'd ever believed in me, who'd made me believe in _myself,_ was gone, and I couldn't cope."

"And then I came back," Shepard said.

"And then you came back." Garrus shook his head. "Here I was trying to die and you swept in and saved my dumb ass. _Again._ I don't deserve it, Shepard. I don't deserve _you._ And every time we talk – about my squad, about the Collectors, about _anything,_ I'm reminded of it. So I keep myself busy, and I calibrate the damn cannon over and over, because whenever I force myself to take a minute to talk to you it's like torture."

He took a deep, shuddering breath. "So I'm sorry, Shepard. I'm sorry I wasted the time we could have had. I'm sorry that I'm so worthless. I'm sorry about a lot of things." He tightened his grip on the Vindicator as his motion tracker showed him the assassins preparing to storm the stairs. "I'm so damn sorry."

The assassins charged.


	4. Chapter 4

Garrus's first two bursts destroyed the shields of the first assassin up the stairs. The salarian was firing his SMG at Garrus, spraying him with rounds, but Garrus's shields held strong, and he put a third burst in the assassin's face. As the salarian began to crumple, Garrus sent a concussive blast at him. The cadaver slammed into the assassin behind it, making him fall, which made him collide with the man behind him. Garrus switched targets to the fourth enemy, who was hastily dodging out of the way of his collapsing allies, and took him down, too.

The Vindicator clicked empty.

Throwing the assault rifle aside, Garrus pulled his Viper sniper rifle from his back, ignoring the pain in his right arm and chest as he did. He braced the weapon against his hip, not bothering to line up a shot through the scope, and fired, pumping round after round into the fifth and sixth and seventh assassins. His shields flickered and died as they sprayed him with their SMGs, but they went down.

He expended the Viper's ammunition.

Now the second and third assassins were back on their feet, the eighth and ninth were charging up the stairs themselves, Garrus was down to Shepard's heavy pistol – he'd left his own on the third floor in his hurry to get the two of them up the stairs – and the assassins' gunfire was slamming into his armor, pummeling his already-bruised chest. He blasted the eighth assassin with Shepard's pistol, putting six rounds in the salarian's chest, and he was totally empty.

The three that were left riddled his armor with rounds. Garrus reeled back, feeling more than one get through his armor to shred his flesh. He forced himself to crawl away from the mouth of the stairs, trying not to think about the trail of dark blue blood he was leaving behind him.

He collapsed onto his back next to Shepard, who was either unconscious or very close to it. His chest was on fire, his right arm was throbbing, he could barely breathe, and he had nothing left to throw at the assassins. He was done. _They_ were done.

The three salarians Garrus hadn't managed to kill strode confidently up the stairs, reloading their SMGs. Two of them took up position at the mouth of the stairs, while the last one walked over to stand over Garrus.

"Quite a chase, Archangel," the salarian said. "Nothing less than I'd expect."

"Why?" Garrus asked with more difficulty than he'd have liked. His mouth tasted like blood.

"I don't ask why." The salarian leveled his SMG at Garrus's face. "I just make sure the job gets done."

He pulled the trigger.

It was absurd, but it took a full second for Garrus to absorb the fact that he wasn't dead. He stared at the fully-loaded SMG less than a meter from his face. The salarian was holding down the trigger, but nothing was happening. What the hell was going on?

Then the three salarians started writhing in pain, clutching at their heads – no, they were trying to get their helmets off, Garrus realized. Their shields flickered and died.

He didn't question it. He just forced himself up, fighting through the pain and the exhaustion, fighting against the weight of his body and the weakness in his limbs, and ripped the SMG out of the assassin's hands. He fit his finger into the trigger guard, aimed the weapon, and appealed to whatever spirit of justice was helping them to make the gun work for him.

The SMG shuddered in his hands as he raked the assassins with its fire, painting the walls with their blood. All three of them collapsed, twitching.

Garrus collapsed as well, letting the weapon fall to the floor. That was it. His visor reported no more contacts. Unless the Blood Pack sent in more mercs to retake the tower – something that might still happen, he thought, but he fervently hoped against it – he and Shepard were in the clear.

Now the question was whether they would survive until reinforcements from the Normandy got to them.

"Shepard," Garrus said, his tongue thick in his mouth. "You still there?"

Shepard made a noise in the back of her throat which sounded vaguely affirmative.

"They're dead, Shepard," Garrus whispered. "We're safe now."

She chuckled. "Safe, huh?" Her voice was a rasp, barely above a whisper, but the medi-gel had helped improve her breathing. "For someone who's safe, I feel like hell."

"You and me both." Garrus resisted the darkness creeping in at the edges of his vision. "Do me a favor, Shepard. If it's not too much trouble."

"If it doesn't involve moving more than a centimeter or two, you got it," she said.

Garrus swallowed, feeling blood trickle down his throat as he did. "Tell me why. Why me? Before there was Kaidan, and Liara, and now there's Jacob – and Thane, if you can get past the fascination with killing people."

"Why, Garrus?" Shepard coughed, from deep in her chest. Garrus felt his heart wrench at the sound of it, but they were out of medi-gel and he could tear his own wounds open further if he moved. "I don't know why. There are a lot of reasons I could want you. You're a good man who worries too much and is way too hard on himself. You're funny, honest, brave – and you know it, but you're modest about it."

Garrus became aware that she was looking at him, so he tilted his head to the left, making eye contact. "But," Shepard went on, "when it comes down to it – with the two of us lying here, half-dead – when it's all said and done, I think it's because I trust you. Because, no matter what you say, you're _not_ worthless. And because if I had to die fighting, I'd want to do it with you."

With some serious effort, Garrus managed to shift his arm enough that he could take Shepard's hand in his own. "I – thanks. Thanks, Shepard."

She gave him her smile – the smile he knew, the smile he loved – and he wasn't afraid any longer.

* * *

The first thing he felt was the pain, but it was dim, distant – nowhere near as bad as he remembered it being. The next thing was light, shining on his face. With a groan, Garrus tried to ward off the light with one of his hands. He came fully awake when he realized he couldn't move any of his limbs.

Opening his eyes, Garrus immediately recognized the Normandy's medical bay. The light shining on his face was from one of the overhead fixtures.

"Welcome back to the land of the living," a familiar voice said to him.

Garrus looked around until he saw Dr. Chakwas. The elderly human woman sat at her desk, a datapad in her hand. "Shepard?" he asked, his voice barely a croak.

"Considering that _her_ wounds were dressed with medi-gel shortly after she sustained them, she made a speedier recovery than you," Dr. Chakwas said. "I discharged her yesterday. You've been in bed for three days since Jacob, Miranda, and Grunt brought the two of you back here."

"I was pretty shot up, huh?" Garrus asked.

"That," Dr. Chakwas said archly, "is a gross understatement. By all rights, you should not be alive right now."

"What's that saying humans have? 'Never look a gift horse in the mouth?'"

"Precisely." The doctor rose from her seat, moving to Garrus's bio-bed. She tapped some commands into the control board above his head. "Chakwas to Commander Shepard," she said.

Shepard's voice came through, loud and clear, over the ship's comm. "Shepard here, doctor."

"Garrus is awake. I think he might like to see you, considering your name was the first thing he said."

"I'll be right down. Thank you."

Garrus waited until Dr. Chakwas closed the comm channel. "How much longer am I going to be in here?"

"Another day at least. Possibly more. I can't make any promises, of course. Compared to the state you were in three days ago, your injuries from the gunship attack were mere flesh wounds."

He closed his eyes, weariness flooding him. "Thank you."

"You are quite welcome," Dr. Chakwas replied. "Just do me a favor, Garrus. Never do anything like this again."

Garrus tried to spread his mandibles in a smile, but even that hurt too much to hold for more than a second. "Not planning on it."

The sound of the med bay doors opening reached his ears. Footfalls rang against the deck plating, footfalls he would recognize anywhere.

"You can have a few minutes, but after that, he must rest some more," Dr. Chakwas said. "Is that understood, Commander?" A beat passed, just long enough for a nod. "Then I'll leave you two alone."

Garrus looked at Shepard as she seated herself next to his bed. She was still pale, but beyond that, she looked fine. He breathed a small sigh of relief.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey."

After a moment's silence, Shepard said, "I owe you one, Garrus. Thanks."

"Don't worry about it," Garrus murmured. "I think we're past the point where we need to constantly balance the scales between us, Shepard."

"I guess we are at that." Haltingly, but with increasing confidence, Shepard reached out to take Garrus's hand. He winced a little as his right arm protested, but he curled his fingers around hers, drawing comfort from the contact.

"So," Garrus said. "It's been a few days. Any other attempts on you by the STG?"

"No," Shepard replied. "After Miranda, Jacob and Grunt pulled us out of that tower, Joker took the Normandy to a secure location. We sent off a message to the Illusive Man and had him do some digging."

"Cerberus intel finally working for us instead of against us?" Garrus asked.

"Exactly. You remember Administrator Anoleis?"

Garrus narrowed his eyes as he searched his memory. "The salarian in charge of Port Hanshan on Noveria? He was a son of a bitch."

"No argument here. At any rate, it turns out that he was _very_ well-connected. Even after we put him away, he had friends in high places in the salarian government. When word got to him that I was back from the dead, he apparently used up his last remaining favors and got a hit put out on me for the STG."

"After all this time? Petty bastard."

Shepard shrugged. "No good deed goes unpunished, Garrus. I thought you knew that."

"Of course. How could I forget?" Garrus started to laugh, but it made his chest ache, so he stopped. "And – what happened at the end, there? The salarians had us dead to rights. We were both unarmed, bleeding out, and there was nothing to stop them. The lead one even pulled the trigger on his SMG and it didn't fire. Was it a miracle?"

EDI's voice came in over the comm system. "Hardly. It was me."

"EDI, have you been eavesdropping on us?" Shepard asked, her tone sharp.

"I can assure you that everything you say will be held in the utmost confidence," EDI replied.

Garrus couldn't say he _believed_ it, but right now he was just happy to be alive. Worrying about the AI could come later. "So what did you do?" he asked.

"When you made contact with the Normandy, you did so after shutting down a dampening field generator in the Blood Pack tower," EDI replied. "This allowed me to access the system remotely. When the assassins entered the fourth floor, it put them in sufficient proximity to the transceiver to allow me to tap into the wireless networks of their omni-tools. From there I infiltrated their weaponry, armor, and comm system."

 _Oh, no._ "So you saved Shepard and me."

"I kept the lead assassin from shooting you, certainly, after which I overloaded their comm system with extremely painful levels of white noise," EDI replied primly. "However, your exploitation of the opening that afforded you was what saved you and Shepard in the end. I believe it is safe to say we share credit."

Garrus closed his eyes, trying to ignore the headache that threatened him. He owed EDI his life. The AI would never let him live this down.

"While I have your attention, I would like to make an additional note," EDI continued. "It would be extremely helpful if you would cease your attempts to recalibrate the Thanix cannon. Your algorithms, while technically impressive, have several functional conflicts with Cerberus data architecture, and are thus the cause of the discrepancy."

"You're not serious," Garrus said.

"I am always serious."

"Why didn't you say something earlier?" he demanded.

"I only became aware of the problem after Shepard mentioned your efforts to me," EDI replied. "After all, command restrictions prevent me from exercising any control on the ship's systems, which includes weapon calibration and diagnostics."

"Thanks, EDI," Shepard said. "Now give us a few minutes _alone._ I mean it."

"Very well, Shepard." The AI made an audible click which Garrus guessed was supposed to sound like a recording device being switched off.

"You okay?" Shepard asked him with a knowing smile.

"Oh, you know," Garrus sighed. "Just a few dozen solid hours of struggling with the weapons down the drain."

"I'm sorry."

"So am I."

They fell silent for a minute, neither quite sure how to proceed. Eventually, Garrus felt Shepard's grip on his hand tighten as she straightened up in her chair, clearly bracing herself. "So," she said. "Where do we go from here?"

"I think," Garrus said slowly, "that we go forward. We deal with things one day at a time, just like before."

"I meant with the two of us."

"So did I." Garrus gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. "Frankly, Shepard, we could both be dead this time tomorrow – killed by Collectors or merc squads or the Reapers showing up ahead of schedule. I'm not going to lie and say that I know we're going to make it out of this alive, because I don't."

Shepard's expression fell. "So you think –"

"I think," Garrus interrupted her, "that we should make the most of the time we have. One day at a time, like I said. And if we die fighting… well, it's like _you_ said. At least we'll be doing it together."

Shepard smiled. "Thank you, Garrus."

"Thank _you,_ " he said. "For everything, Shepard. For your friendship, and your advice… and for making me feel like maybe I'm not worthless."

"You _aren't_ worthless, Garrus," Shepard replied. "Believe me."

And as he lay there in the med bay, looking up at Shepard's smile, Garrus did believe her. For the first time in a long time – after all the guilt, the self-doubt, and the crushing reality of his failures – Garrus knew he had a reason to keep fighting.

Her name was Shepard, and she made his life worthwhile.


End file.
